Controversial 'Laramie Project' play won't be performed at Ottumwa High

A drama teacher now plans to stage the play with many of her students at the city's performing arts center.

Jul. 22, 2013

Ottumwa High School drama teacher Natalie Saunders and local theater director Dale Dommer are working together on 'The Laramie Project' at the city's performing arts center, after administrators nixed the production at the school. 'It isn't just about the performance,' Saunders said. 'Theater is a tool for education.' / Michael Morain/The Register

ADVERTISEMENT

OTTUMWA, IA. — The show will go on — somewhere else.

Now that leaders at Ottumwa High School have nixed plans for a student production of “The Laramie Project” this fall, the school’s drama teacher has decided to stage it on her own terms — with many of her students — at the city’s performing arts center.

The drama around the drama is the latest revival of a debate that has played out in schools across the country, including West Des Moines’ Valley High School, where a 2006 “Laramie” production prompted a firestorm of controversy: on a local radio station, on the sidewalks where the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church protested, and on the school-board ballot, where a concerned dad launched an unsuccessful campaign to unseat the members who gave the show a green light.

Ottumwans are dusting off a similar script seven years later. Alumni have written letters to the Ottumwa Courier. Parents have called the local school board.

Ottumwa High’s administrators hoped to troubleshoot a potential problem before it turned into a bigger ordeal.

The years since the Valley controversy have seen legalization of same-sex marriage in Iowa and other states, and recently the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a fatal blow to the Defense of Marriage Act. But in some ways the spotlight of “Laramie” is brighter. Schools everywhere have stepped up the fight against bullying, especially the kind that led to the 1998 murder of a 21-year-old gay man named Matthew Shepard outside Laramie, Wyo., that inspired the 2000 play by Moises Kaufman, and a sequel, “The Laramie Project: 10 Years Later.”

In Iowa, 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn of Primghar, Ia., killed himself last year after coming out to his classmates, who had taunted him on Facebook. The documentary “Bully” brought national attention to Sioux City public schools around the same time. After the “Laramie” production at Valley, former Gov. Chet Culver visited the school to sign a bill to ban bullying in all Iowa schools.

So Ottumwa students say it’s hard to understand why school administrators wouldn’t want them to produce a play that confronts those issues head-on.

“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Jordan Young, a junior in the thespian group. “This is a show that deals specifically with bullying and the outcome that it had on an entire town because of one bullying incident. If they’re trying to get rid of bullying, then why would they say ‘no’ to this show?”

Principal Mark Hanson, who made the decision to cancel the performance, said he agrees with the play’s message. But he’d rather see more family-friendly fare on the high school stage. He noted that when Indian Hills Community College performed the show in town a few years ago, they spread the word: viewer discretion advised.

“Could we have done it? Yeah,” Hanson said. “We were on the fence with it, but we came to the conclusion that it would be better at a community theater,” where it could reach a wider audience and wouldn’t have to be scrubbed of its original R-rated language. (The West Des Moines production swapped in some “hecks” and “darns” with the playwright’s permission.)

Ottumwa resident Pam Schulz, who has nine grandchildren in Ottumwa schools, was relieved to learn that the play will not be a high school production.

“When I saw the article in the paper, I thought, ‘Well, that’s certainly the right approach,’ ” she said. “That’s not a play that should be promoted for any family entertainment. I’m especially concerned about the younger children. The way it’s presented is just not healthy for student entertainment.”

Superintendent Davis Eidahl also supported Hanson’s decision.

“We can all agree: It’s an important show for people to see because of its powerful message about the brutality of intolerance and the senselessness of it,” he said. “But we want to produce plays that encourage the greatest number of individuals and families to come out and watch.”

And that’s where Natalie Saunders disagrees. The drama teacher has taught in Ottumwa for 15 years, directing heavy hitters such as “The Crucible” (about adultery and ostracization), “Dark of the Moon” (religious intolerance) and “David and Lisa” (mental-health disorders). She coached a shortened, readers-theater version of “The Laramie Project” back in 2001, and her high school students took it to competition without much fuss.

“It isn’t just about the performance,” she said. “Theater is a tool for education. I look at: Which shows are my students ready to handle? Who in my program is looking at pursuing theater in the future? You can’t always showcase a student’s strongest talents unless you push them to a new level.”

She recruited Dale Dommer, a local theater director, to help with the now-independent play set for October at the Bridge View Center. He wrote a letter to the school board, urging them to overrule the decision to cancel the play.

“This is censorship at best, and it is wrong,” Dommer said.

“The Laramie Project” was the 10th-most-frequently produced non-musical play on high school stages during 2011-12, according to the Educational Theatre Association, based in Cincinnati. The nonprofit group surveys roughly 3,750 schools nationwide. “Laramie” is also a popular choice for colleges and community theaters, including a handful in Iowa that have followed Stage­West’s state premiere in Des Moines in 2002.

But even as the show becomes more accepted, disagreements like the one in Ottumwa still surface from time to time across the country. The play has become a measuring stick to see how much public opinion has or hasn’t changed in the 15 years since Shepard’s death.

The Matthew Shepard Foundation responded to the Ottumwa debate on the foundation’s Facebook page, saying it was disappointed with the school leaders’ decision:

“The story of what happened to Matthew and the impact on Laramie offers a meaningful opportunity to engage both the student population and the community in conversation about hate and the violence it breeds. Teenagers — whether they be in Iowa, New York City or any other part of the country — are living this ‘adult content’ every day in their schools, communities and homes. Students of all ages deal with the issues of bullying, hatred and bias on a daily basis. They are much wiser and have seen more than many adults would like to believe.”

Superintendent Eidahl said he wished the decision-making process had started earlier. The issue landed on his desk in May, in the rush of end-of-the-year duties and graduation. He said the decision will stand, and he is ready to move on.

“It’s overshadowed all the progress we’re making,” he said, citing last year’s record-high attendance, at 95.4 percent, and a five-point boost in student-satisfaction surveys over the last three years. “We’ve worked very hard at our high school to create a culture of compassion and respect and acceptance, and that’s not accomplished with an assembly or some poster on the wall. It’s accomplished every day in the classrooms, in the hallway, in the lunchroom. It’s about setting standards that ensure that each and every student can get up in the morning and feel good and even excited about coming to our schools.”

“The idea that we’re not allowing these conversations to take place at our high school couldn’t be further from the truth,” he said.

He plans to attend the play at the Bridge View Center in October, during the first fall semester without an Ottumwa High play for as long as anyone seems to remember. A replacement was never scheduled.